The Schleyer Tape (1977-78)

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STORYLINE

Klaus vom Bruch’s second videotape is made up almost exclusively of TV footage recorded between September 1977 and June 1978. During these months, public consciousness in Germany had been devastated by the abduction and murder of the German industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer through RAF terrorists, and the death of several terrorists in dubious circumstances in Stammheim prison, Stuttgart. By keeping to a minimum his interventions in the existing TV footage, Klaus vom Bruch articulates the general speechlessness of art in the face of those particular events. Made before the general availability of domestic VCRs, the ‘Schleyer Tape’ transposed the events and their coverage from the context of television to that of art in order to subject them to a renewed, possibly more intensive, consideration.

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